Influences? I first thought of Bartók, certainly the 1st
Quartet started a little like him. However, in the way that
the opening movement is constructed I thought of Elizabeth Maconchy
2nd Quartet - just a simple four-note fragment F-D-E-F.
The work is not twelve-tone but is dedicated to Benjamin Frankel
- who himself wrote five quartets - Crawford’s teacher for a
while at the Guildhall School of Music and to whom he owes an
enormous debt of support. Frankel, anyway, took a laissez-faire
view of serial technique. Back in Edinburgh where the quartet
was completed in late 1949 it was Hans Gál with whom he once
studied privately that might have been an influence. This can
be heard in the lyrical Adagio cantabile of the same
work. Walton was also the rage at the time and Crawford writes
a rather creepy but passionate fugue for the slow finale. The
Scherzo may also be Bartókian but some of the rhythmic interplay
is Waltonian.

But ... but … but this is all nonsense really, Crawford has
a unique voice and one which has been hidden away for too long.
I myself had failed to hear any of his music until I reviewed
earlier this year (2011) the Metier disc of some of his works
with recorder and clarinet (msv 28520). Speaking of the 1st
Quartet it is a four movement work for which the composer
asks, at the top of the score, according to Adam Binks’ excellent
booklet essay, for the minimum of vibrato. It is sometimes a
freely atonal work yet a key-centre can normally be detected
through its chromaticism.

For me the 2nd Quartet does
not quite work. It is in three movements of ever-increasing
speed: Adagio, Allegretto and finally Allegro
molto marked Scherzando. It is based partially on
a 12-tone row. From that point of view it is a child of the
1950s. The music is never atonal however. In fact the row is
heard as a ground bass in the first movement - a little like
Robert Simpson might have done - and is also treated imitatively.
The Leggiero middle movement is described by Adam Binks
as a “mischievous Scherzo” which I agree with. Then he says,
about the rondo form finale, that it is a climax of “mounting
tension”. I cannot see his point; he enjoins us to discover
that the ‘tension is “released only in the final bars”. Well,
I’m sorry but I feel no tension in this performance or in this
rather genial work. The final Scherzando ends in an under-stated,
rather matter-of-fact manner. I felt that another more exciting,
say Presto movement, is needed to crown the work.

So it was with slightly mixed feelings that I approached the
3rd Quartet. Not that the Edinburgh
Quartet, who know the composer’s work well, or the recording
and its acoustics would be the problem; quite the reverse as
these performers and this venue are exemplary. The former I
have heard in Hans Gál and elsewhere. The venue has been used
before. Indeed I know the fine, Ninian Comper-inspired episcopal
church very well. I was however concerned that the music should
‘grab’ me a little more. Well, I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t
entirely do that. This is a melancholy and at times moving four-movement
piece based in a vague way on a tone row. It has a fleeting
and crepuscular Scherzo which comes second but which fails to
lighten in any way the atmosphere. Set this alongside a tense
Mesto third movement and a Moderato finale which
only serves to recapitulate the mood of the rest. There seems
to be no particular moment of climax or of excitement. Certainly
the music does not ramble but the form seems unclear. On the
other hand it is a work to which I will happily return. Probably
you will feel a little muddled by my comments but that’s what
music does to us sometimes.

So the CD comes with some reservations from me. It is worth
pursuing and persevering with and I hope that the newly completed
4th Quartet is recorded in the near future.

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